When Drew Barrymore bounds into the offices of her Hollywood production company, Flower Films, she may be wearing the new-mom uniform  no makeup, a sweatshirt and jeans she says she just grabbed off her bedroom floor  but she doesn't show one ounce of typical just-had-a-baby exhaustion.

Olive, her first child with her husband, art consultant Will Kopelman, was born on September 26, and  barely a month later  Barrymore seems remarkably energized by all the newfound love in her life. After staying home for much of the pregnancy, she and Kopelman are already incorporating date nights back into their relationship, along with days of doting on their baby girl. The night before, Kopelman took Barrymore to the Universal Studios theme park in Hollywood for its Halloween Horror Night. (Though Olive stayed at home, she had her share of holiday festivities  her parents goofily dressed her up as a lobster, inserted her into a large pot, and snapped plenty of pictures. "I would take a lobster costume over a couture dress any day," says her proud mom.)

This is an intensely, almost unimaginably happy time for Barrymore: The night at the amusement park set off sparks for Kopelman and her that were as electric as when they first became an item.

"Last night, I was looking at my husband like, What if he weren't my husband and we hadn't just had a baby and we were just here with a group of people?" Barrymore recalls, beaming. "I was just having such a crush on him."

After years of teenage rebellion, two short-lived marriages (to Jeremy Thomas for two months in 1994, and to comedian Tom Green for six months in 2001), and two much longer relationships (five years with Fabrizio Moretti of The Strokes; a few on-and-off years with actor Justin Long), Barrymore finally feels she's on the right path.

With her new thoughtfully chosen roles of wife, mother, and  surprise!  makeup mogul, she is transitioning to a more mature and heartfelt understanding of what really matters in life. And she couldn't be more optimistic about her recent decisions.

EAT, PRAY, LEAVE

This peace of mind took some serious engineering and tough choices. Perhaps the most challenging was the long stretch when Barrymore left her Hollywood life to go on what some might call a sabbatical. In Barrymore's case, it was a year of self-discovery and adventure, similar to what Elizabeth Gilbert famously captured in her best seller Eat, Pray, Love.

The journey began soon after Barrymore made her directorial debut in 2009 with Whip It, a movie she also starred in, about a Texas roller derby. Despite the satisfaction of this achievement, she recognized that she'd become a textbook workaholic.

"I was always really focused on the thing I was working on, then worried about that thing I had to go to next," she recalls. "So my brain was always tied up in the present and in the future."

Since founding Flower Films with best pal (and wife of Jimmy Fallon) Nancy Juvonen in 1995, Barrymore had had a string of hits, surprising for a place as fickle as Hollywood: On the serious side, there was Donnie Darko; on the blockbuster side, Charlie's Angels and its sequel; and, when it came to romantic comedies, there were Music and Lyrics, He's Just Not That Into You, and 50 First Dates, in which Barrymore also starred.

Beyond those movies, there were the campaigns for CoverGirl and Gucci Jewelry, and those rather tempestuous relationships, which provided plenty of tabloid fodder but never quite led to anything permanent.

Where was Barrymore's own off-screen romantic comedy, with a "happily ever after" ending? She realized she'd have to go out and find it.

"I just knew I couldn't sustain this life and have a relationship and a family," she says. "I wanted to live a little bit more in the present." Mostly, she confides, "I knew I wanted things to be different."

And so she decided to take a real break: "I thought, What if I distance myself a little bit, take some time off, and smell the flowers elsewhere in life? It's so scary to leave everything behind; it's terrifying."

She worried that she might lose her fire, her ambition to create opportunities for her production team and for herself. "Will I suddenly become un-passionate and stop caring?" she wondered. Would the workaholic part of her, which had defined her since she first became a child star in the eighties with E.T., Firestarter, and Irreconcilable Differences, disappear?

"It freaked me out. I was afraid to let go," she admits. "But with great risk comes great reward."

One day, a film project she had worked on getting off the ground for a solid year "just disintegrated into thin air," Barrymore recalls wistfully. And she realized a life of "working, working, working, working, and working" just wasn't going to be enough. It was time for a change, so she packed her bags.

Reading Eat, Pray, Love along the way, Barrymore took herself, by herself, to India. She walked through the Himalayas in Bhutan for a couple of weeks. And she learned about the beauty of time, she says, and how amazing and peaceful solo life can be.

"We always wonder [when single], Where is this person? Oh my God, I'm lonely; what's my future? But eventually you'll meet somebody, and this time will be gone. And you will kick yourself for not enjoying it," she says. "For me, that year was a great investment. It made me realize, I'm ready for something different."

Without that one year to just be alone and think, Barrymore believes, things might not have worked out the way they did.

"Had I not carved out that time for myself, I don't know if I'd be as happy trying to figure out what makes my husband happy and how to be a good mom," she explains. "I needed to be on my own and do my own thing."

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